Google Earth and Tour Builder

     This week we spent time with 2 different apps.  One that I have limited experience with, and one that I have no experience with.  Those 2 apps are Google Earth and Tour Builder respectively.  There is also a Google Earth plugin for your browser.

     According to Google^© “Google Earth allows you to travel the world through a virtual globe and view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, and much more. With Google Earth's rich, geographical content, you are able to experience a more realistic view of the world. You can fly to your favorite place, search for businesses and even navigate through directions.”  Personally, one of the coolest things I found out about was that you don’t even have to stay on Earth.  You can “walk” on the moon where NASA astronauts walked all those years ago.  You can even go where no man has ever gone before, Mars.  You can even enable the Flight Simulator and fly several different types of aircraft.  You are also able to dive down deep into the ocean.  You can turn back the clock and view historical areas using thebutton.  The possibilities are positively endless.  While working on some assignments I found 2 really good resources on using Google Earth in the classroom.  They are Bring Google Earth Into Your Science Class & How Teachers are using Google Earth in the classroom.  If you would like to learn more about using Google Earth please check the following Google Earth Tutorial:

     Tour Builder, to me, was more of an addon to Google Earth.  It is not a standalone program, it uses Google Earth to take you on a tour of your choosing.  According to Google^{© “}Google Tour Builder is a web-based storytelling tool which lets you easily create and explore stories and places around the world. Based on the Google Earth plugin, you can create a tour of any subject of your choosing, zooming in to show the places where events took place, and easily integrating the story’s text, photos and videos. Your tour will fly users from one place to the next along the storyline of your tour, immersing them in the relevant places through Google Earth’s imagery and the custom content you provide.”  I did really like the freedom of Tour Builder.  In my opinion it was very easy to use.  I really liked the ability to embed photos and videos directly from Google.  If you want, you can also upload photos or videos from your computer into your tour. I did find a few websites about using Tour Builder in the classroom: Tour Builder in Google Earth & Take a Trip with Google Tour Builder.  If you would like to know more about using check out this Tour Builder Tutorial: 

Here is a tour I created on Albert Einstein using Tour Builder.  What suggestions do you have for using Google Earth and Tour Builder in the classroom?

Handy Google

This week our focus has been on Google Calendar and other miscellaneous Google tools.  I knew that Google had many other tools, but I had no idea that there were that many out there.

I have always used iCal, but the major downfall I found with it was that it could only be used on Apple products.  I think I will begin using Google Calendar from here on out for the simple fact that it can be used across multiple platforms: Apple, Windows, and mobile devices.  It could be rather tedious to get to your calendar on a mobile device since there is no Google Calendar app.  There are many 3^rd party apps out there that you can download to your mobile device that allow you to sync your Google calendar across your mobile device.  The one that I am going to try is called CalenMob.  Here is a link to the developer Appxy.  Does anyone else use a different app?

The Internet has made it so much easier for people to get information, but there is also a downfall to this.  It has also made it easier for not completely reliable information to be found.  Google Scholar allows the user to find peer reviewed information, as a science teacher this is a big help.  I really liked that you are able to sort your results by relevancy or by date.  One of the things I did not like was that many of the article titles contained many Tier 3 level vocabulary, Science type jargon.  All in all I found this to be a very useful search tool.  This would be a tremendously useful tool for students to determine the timeliness and credibility of a source.  So many of my students want to go to Wikipedia and call it good, but this would allow them to find credible resources.  Here is a video tutorial on how to use Google Scholar:

 

I think I'm really going to start to re-evaluate my tech program choices.  As I said earlier I had no idea that Google had quite so many things to offer, and how seamlessly they work together.  Which of Google's tools are your favorite?

Google Drive

This has kind of been a rough week for me after having my wisdom teeth extracted.  Luckily, I have not been in nearly as much pain as I had feared.  I had heard so many horror stories from friends and family that I think I overestimated the amount of pain I might have.

Well, on to the task at hand.  This week in my grad class we have been working with Google Drive.  It is a tremendous resource for collaboration.  You can share a file with anyone, give them editing rights, and you can work on it together.  This is especially advantageous when you can’t all be in the same place at the same time.  Another advantage of Google Drive is if you are working on a collaborative project, say as a classroom, all people can have their input at the same time.  This presents an amazing opportunity for middle and high schoolers.  They all seem to have an opinion and don’t have the patience to wait to present that opinion.  If you would like information on how to share a document with someone have a peek at this video:

If you are the type of person that likes to see and talk to people while you collaborate then maybe you would be interested in Skype.  Skype is a program that allows you to video conference with other people that have the program.  To be able to use Skype you must have a computer or mobile device with a camera on it.  Here is a video tutorial on how to set up and use Skype:

Research Difficulties

Every year I have my 8^th graders and my Principles of Chemistry and Physics students research an element off of the Periodic Table.  Most of my students have no idea what to type into a search engine to even begin looking things up.  I have found that my student’s idea of research is to go to Wikipedia and call it good.  Another problem that I run into is after they have exhausted Wikipedia is for them to find credible sources. I am hoping I can eliminate 2 of those problems by having my students use the custom Google search engine that I prepared.  The search engine will give me a bit of control over what sites my students can find information.  The only sites that they can get information from are the sites that I pre-loaded into the search engine.  Here is the search engine that I created.

If you would like to know how to create your own custom search engine here is a good link from Google Developers.